Companies should give new employees health MOTs to help fix the nation’s sickness crisis, a senior Labour adviser has said.
Sir Charlie Mayfield, who led a government review into worklessness, has called for employers to introduce health checks to tackle the high levels of long-term sickness blighting the economy.
The former John Lewis chairman wants the UK to learn from countries like Finland, where it is mandatory for businesses to undertake a health check when a new staff member joins.
In an update to his Keep Britain Working review, Sir Charlie said: “It would be really powerful if we were able to tell employers what the state of the health conditions in their workplace are, because they don’t know.”
The latest figures show that 2.8 million people in the UK are out of work as a result of ill health. The Mayfield review found that economic inactivity caused by sickness is costing the UK £212bn per year – equivalent to 7pc of GDP, or nearly 70pc of the income tax paid by households.
Forecasts show that 600,000 Britons will become economically inactive by 2030 if action is not taken.
Sir Charlie said routinely offering health checks could help to prevent staff from leaving the workforce by spotting problems earlier.
He said: “We do think that this could be powerful and it is something which is done routinely in Finland and actually also in Japan.
“Japan does it to a much deeper level. Our view is that you probably don’t make this too complex, you make it fairly simple.”
